Congress wants info on NCAA letting players bet

A trio of congressmen have asked NCAA president Charlie Baker to provide more information about the association’s plans to allow college athletes to bet on professional sports.

Reps. Brett Guthrie, John Joyce and Gus Bilirakis of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which often oversees sports integrity issues, told Baker in a letter published Friday morning that they were examining the NCAA’s proposed policy change and sent a list of nine questions they want answered within two weeks.

The letter said their concerns increased this week in light of recent federal indictments over illegal sports betting and gambling rings involving NBA players and coaches as well as the NCAA’s recent investigations into college athletes betting on their own games.

The NCAA had been on track to drop its ban on pro sports gambling Saturday but delayed the change to Nov. 22. NCAA athletes are still prohibited from betting on college sports and sharing information about college sports with bettors.

“The NCAA has the most aggressive approach of any U.S. league in taking sports betting head on,” Tim Buckley, the NCAA’s senior vice president for external affairs, said in a statement. “The most significant threats to competition integrity are in states that continue to offer risky prop bets as well as the emerging grey market made up of futures and predictions trading sites that operate without oversight. For the last two years, the NCAA has been working with gaming regulators to push for adoption of stronger protections for college athletes and for stronger integrity measures and, while several states have made changes, more work remains.”

The delay came days after SEC commissioner Greg Sankey published a letter to Baker that said his league’s leaders believed the policy change was “a major step in the wrong direction.” Sankey asked the NCAA’s board to rescind the policy change.

If the rule goes into effect, it will mark a shift in a long-held policy that had become difficult to enforce with an increase in legal sports betting in the United States. The NCAA has faced an uptick in alleged betting violations by players in recent years. In September, the NCAA announced that a Fresno State men’s basketball player had manipulated his performance for gambling purposes and conspired with two other players in a prop betting scheme. The NCAA is investigating 13 additional players from six schools regarding potential gambling violations dealing with integrity issues.

On Oct. 22, when the NCAA announced the adoption of the new proposal, it stated that approving the rule change “is not an endorsement of sports betting, particularly for student-athletes.”

Friday’s letter from Guthrie, Joyce and Bilirakis asked Baker what guardrails the NCAA was putting in place to try to avoid illegal sports betting. They also asked for more information about studies the NCAA has done about the impact of betting on student-athletes and details about any “fraudulent, illegal and alleged betting practices in connection with NCAA players,” among other questions.

Bilirakis is the lead author and chief proponent of an NCAA-related bill that Baker and other leaders say is a crucial step in bringing stability to the new business model of college sports. That bill, called the SCORE Act, would help the NCAA enforce rules limiting player movement and spending on players by providing schools with a limited antitrust exemption and declaring that athletes are not employees.